Justices Shy Away From Gay Parent’s Case
May 15 10:32 AM US/Eastern
By GINA HOLLAND
Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON
The Supreme Court refused Monday to block a gay woman from seeking parental rights to a child she had helped raise with her partner.
Justices could have used the case to clarify the rights of gays in child custody disputes stemming from nontraditional families.
They declined, without comment, to disturb a ruling of Washington state's highest court that said Sue Ellen Carvin could pursue ties to the girl as a "de facto parent." The girl is now 11.
The case had brought a contentious issue to a court that has shied away from gay rights disputes.
Lawyers for the girl's biological mother, Page Britain, told justices that the state court decision in this case and others around the country "pave the way for children to have an unlimited and ever- changing number of parents."
Carvin's attorneys had said the court has never agreed to hear a case involving parenting or visitation disputes arising from same-sex relationships, a recognition "that state courts can best provide the case by case attention these matters require."
Carvin and Britain had lived together for five years before they decided to become parents. Britain was artificially inseminated and gave birth in 1995 to the daughter, known as L.B. in court papers. The girl called Carvin "Mama" and Britain "Mommy."
The couple broke up in 2001 and the following year, when the girl was 7, Carvin was barred from seeing the girl. After Carvin went to court, Britain married the sperm donor. Justices were told that the father lives in Thailand.
Copyright 2006 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/05/15/D8HK92F80.html
Interesting this was the same court that couldn’t allow a grandmother in Washington State to have overnight visitation (after her son, the childrens’ biological father, died and the mother married another man) as that was considered to be a real invasion of parental rights (the infamous Troxel case from Washington State) but they don’t think now that allowing a totally unrelated person to have visitation and probably also be eligible for custody, that’s not considered invasive of parental rights…
I see.
I think the real issue is the inconsistency of the court in making these rulings. That’s the real issue, but that’s another post.
Anyway, although masquerading as a gay rights parenting ruling, in fact, this case is only incidentally about gay rights.
What it is at it’s heart is an attack on the biological definition of parenthood. In reality it is part of the ongoing and vicious attacks against mothers (as the person’s whose judgment regarding who her daughter associates with, which is being ignored here, is a mother), the primary nature of the mother/child bond, it’s unchanging essense and an attempt by gender neutralized proponents to substitute the opinion of ‘experts’ as to who has a child’s best interest at heart. It’s another spit in the face of God, evolution, human nature itself which has already decreed who is a child’s parent and has selected mothers as the primary caretakers for the children we alone bear and (due to that unique relationship) mother is the one most likely to act in her child’s best interest 99.9% of the time (barring a few misfit mothers who abuse and/or neglect their children).
This is the way it is in every species, as well as our own, and has been since man first crawled out of the primal mists. Yet those who don’t like this reality are attempting to change it by doing an end run around human nature by petitioning a legal forum. Eventually, like most of these nutty social engineeing attempts to change human nature, this one will also fail miserably. The only question will be: how much harm they’ll do to innocent people before it comes to an inglorious end.
AND another important question, for me anyway, how do we punish the proponents of this when it’s over?
As I’m getting a little sick and tired of these social engineering types causing havoc and destroying the lives of millions of people, then being permitted to walk away afterwards with no punishment. Just as these gender neturalized types caused untold misery in the Soviet Union with this same sort of crap and were never properly punished, how can we ensure the same thing doesn’t happen here after the smoke clears? As I want to see punishment meted out to these gender-neutralized idiots…and I’m talking jail time, confiscation of property, huge fines, etc.,
Anyway, although painted as a victory for this one lesbian, in essence it gives gay parents no new rights they didn’t have before since adoption by a second person has always been allowed. This particular ‘parent’ just chose not to utilize these rights and now wishes to backdate her rights since the relationship has been terminated by the child’s mother.
This will continue the trend of courts (with their hoards of child-free gender neutralized feminsts whose best friend is probably their cat) to cause mllions of mothers to lose custody of their children, 2.3 million at last count and growing…
The only thing good I can see about this ruling is that maybe, just maybe, it will finally stop mothers from moving men into their homes when they have children living with them...Men have been 'free-riding' off this tendency of women to want to be married for almost forty years now. Men obviously aren't as interested in marriage these days and why should they be if women are going to allow men to move into their homes at the drop of a hat? I guess many women hope that if they take these crumbs thrown their way now, they'll be able to negotiate a marriage later. Of course, it makes it that much more difficult for the rest of us women to hold men to any standards in these matters. As if we set limits, there is always another woman out there who has none.
So this has lessened the negotiating ability of ALL women to negotiate a marriage...
So perhaps this risk of mother losing her kids to some defacto jackass, who invested nothing in the relationship intially, but sees a way to either be spiteful or get some financial advantage by having custody of your kids, well this might finally put a stop to women being so careless about who they allow in their homes.
So every cloud has a silver lining.
3 comments:
To me, this is a perfect example how a superficially "progressive" case will have dangerous implications for women. I agree that motherhood is becoming too fraught with complications and risk. Sarah Hrdy once said in her book about Maternal Instincts, that mothers will trust allomothers (substitute caregivers) only if they sense that the allomother will provide good care and will return the child. No single mother can cope without some allomother. But if every allomother (and some "allomothers" are fathers or men)becomes a legal threat to custody, the whole thing becomes an unworkable nightmare. No woman wants to give birth knowing that retaining her child from theft by other allomothers will become an ongoing battle for the next 18 years.
You hit the nail on the head.
These lesbian cases (and these are the main ones I'm noticing making these precedents) are slowly stripping away the rights of all mothers. Obviously the legal system is using these cases to attack parental' rights.
I mean I lived for a few years with a woman and she had kids. Our kids shared the house, yard, everything, but it was a clear rental arrangement. It didn't mean either one of us should be forced into becoming the defacto parent of the other person's kids.
AND that's the danger people don't see, that they could be FORCED into responsibility for someone's else kids just because the state needs to shift the financial burden somewhere.
That's where this is heading.
It will be a good lesson to men if that's where this ends however. That a guy trying to avoid marriage and responsibility moves in with a woman and then when he's ready to move on to the next one, the state hits him with defacto parenthood and a child support bill.
That's where I see this ending. The same thing could happen to women too, btw, if they move in with men...and I have heard of
two people having to pay child support to a third party who had custody...so forget that allomother business.
It only works in nature when there is no financial gain to be made from who the kids spends more time with...in the human world it's not workable, human nature being the way it is...
I had read about allomothers with chimps.
What they should do to test my thesis is give the allomother a banana everytime she has the other chimp's baby, but don't give the chimp mother anything.
Then after doing this for a few weeks, try and see how quick the allomother is to give the chimp baby back to it's mother...
I guarantee you that as soon as the allomother makes the connection between the extra food and possession of the other mother's baby, we'll have the equivalent of a custody fight between her and the chimp's mother.
Unfortunately the way child support has been setup, it has allowed whoever the child spends most of his/her time with to get money from the other parent. So that's the basis for MOST of this custody fight business. I do believe that people, as long as they can demonstrate a certain income level (maybe by posting a bond or something) should be allowed to waive child support. I guarantee you that we cut down by 3/4 all this abduction and custody business if this was allowed...
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